


to what end?

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bickering, Captivity, Childhood Sweethearts, Engagement, F/M, Growing Up Together, Idiots in Love, Negotiations, Riverrun, Sort Of, Unresolved Sexual Tension, awkward as hell really, but it does tend to pop up again, fic of a fic, ish, which has been resolved previously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-12 20:16:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21482224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: what if Jaime and Brienne knew each other before she hauled his stupid, cranky self to Kings Landing? what if they had a ~relationship~? as kids? and spent a lot of time kissing?incredible self-indulgence.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 19
Kudos: 233





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Intended](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19718899) by [ddagent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ddagent/pseuds/ddagent). 

> i read ddagent's marvelous "Intended" at the beginning of my foray into the fandom, and it's been on my mind since then. i can't equal it for charm or the lovely delicacy of the j/b relationship but I LOVE IT SO MUCH, okay? i'm sorry if this is awkward and gross. please forgive me for this fanfic of your fanfic.
> 
> written 18 November 2019, on my phone, because i have learned nothing.

“Walk.”

He’d only stopped to scratch his arse against a tree, more like a bear than a Kingsguard, but Brienne was implacable. No doubt she expected Jaime to use the spare moment to free himself, steal her sword, and murder her —

_Before I conjure a horse out of thin air and return to Kings Landing at a gallop._ If magical tricks were an option he wouldn’t have spent an extremely dull year in a cell.

He did not want to admit to either of them how much his mood had been improved by the appearance of Brienne’s dour head, even as it was hovering near Catelyn Stark. He’d spent plenty of hours praying to the Warrior in that damned cell, when boredom, loneliness, and the occasional spurt of real fear overtook over his general atheism; now it seemed the prayers were answered. An unusual occurrence, and he did not intend to let it pass by.

She made him walk in front, refusing to answer anything he wanted to talk about. He started out on the safe, boring topics (weather; the state of the road and direction of travel; his preferences in plate armor and chainmail), exhausting every avenue he could think of while she marched behind him, grimly  
silent. It was fine. He was feeling charitable.

By evening charity had worn thin. When she finished sparking a spare fire and settled in to roast their supper, one eye on Jaime, he said: “We should talk.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

Anger flared; he swallowed it down. “I suppose there are other options.”

“Indeed,” said the wench. “I could gag you.”

_I’d rather put something in _your _mouth_ he wanted to say and did not. He did not think she made empty threats. “Surely you owe me something more than common courtesy —“

“You killed Aerys.”

“Yes, but—“

“You killed your guard.”

“Yes, but —“

“Why should I listen to anything you say?”

He stared at her until she dropped her gaze and turned away. “You know why.”

Brienne said to the forest: “I’m doing this for Lady Stark. It has nothing to do with who you are.”

“Mm. So you’re going to pretend we don’t know one another —“

“You are nothing to me—“

“—all the way to Kings Landing? Quite a long walk to keep a stony silence. But I suppose that’s a due punishment. You know how much I like it when you’re noisy.”

Brienne stood up, jerked the roasted rabbit unto some green leaves, and let it there a moment to cool. She stood at Jaime’s feet, looming over him. “Enough of the filth, Kingslayer.”

He’d wondered when that nickname would come out. “Beg your pardon, my lady. I wouldn’t want to presume an informality exists between us.”

“Not anymore.”

“It was different, once. Not so terribly long ago.”

“Long enough.”

It was his turn to look away, now. He said: “I heard of your engagement. Ser -- what was his name? Wagstaff? He was quite vocal on your talent with a mace.”

A trace of a smile flickered over her face, or was that the dying fire imitating a movement? “I’m sure he had much to say on the topic.”

“He is recovered, they say. With a new weather-wise ache. How many bones did you break?”

She went back and poked at the rabbit, separating the meat into sections. “Ser Humfrey told me that a woman is made for one thing only. He told me I’d give up on fighting when we were married.”

“Did he mean that as instruction or a threat? Thank you,” because she handed him a fair portion of supper. He hadn’t really expected to eat at all. But no, that wasn’t Brienne’s way, was it? There were so many things he had forgotten about her.

Or else she had changed.

“He meant it as a rule to his wife,” said Brienne, between bites, “but I have no doubt he would enforce it with his hands.”

“I would not have asked you to stop fighting,” Jaime said, soft.

“I know.” She kept her eyes on her food.

“Brienne—“

“No,” she said, rough. “It’s time for sleep."

Jaime sighed. "Must I be tied to the tree again?"

"You’ll forgive me for taking precautions.”

“Up, Kingslayer. The skies look clear and we’ve a long way to go.” She did not look well-rested.

Jaime, who had slept sitting up, half-strangling every time his head slumped forward, found it hard to be sympathetic. “Did you sleep at all?”

“Get on your feet.”

“I need to piss.”

“Then piss,” she snapped.

He groaned, stretching, and turned away to complete the necessary. “Not such a restful night for me. I’ve definitely had better.” 

She didn’t answer.

“For example. The last night I spent between your legs.”

No reply. And when he twisted round to look at her, her face was blank. Not even a maidenly blush.

“Do you ever think of that night? Nights.”

“Walk.”

“There were _several_ nights.”

“Walk faster.” She flapped the rope.

Jaime took his time, wishing he could see her face again. “I mean that there was more than one night. It was not a single mistake.”

“I know what _several_ means.”

“Do you ever think of it?”

She stopped walking then, and did not warn him, so he came to the end of the leash and stumbled off his feet. 

He turned around protesting and Brienne said: “I am only going to say this once, Jaime Lannister, and you will listen to me. What happened between us is in the past. If you try to tell someone, no one will believe you. I’ll say you are a liar — which you are — and a king-killer — which you are — and a treasonous, sister-fucking traitor. _Which you are.”_

He’d forgotten how pale she turned when she was angry. He had forgotten so much. “We slept together,” he said. “I held you in my arms and took your maidenhead. Do you deny it?”

“Aerys,” she said. “And Cersei. And how many others, Jaime? Do you deny them?”

“We said words to one another.”

“You left me.”

He bit his mouth. “You never let me explain.”

“You don’t need to explain anything. I don’t care. We are going to Kings Landing and I will hand you over and if the next time I see your face it is on a pike, I will not weep for you. I have done my grieving. Do you understand?”

He understood. He wished he didn’t. “Don’t be like this.”

“If you say one more word about it, I’ll cut out your tongue.”

He couldn’t see any trace of exaggeration on her face. “You wouldn’t.”

She took out her knife. It looked sharp. “Start walking, Kingslayer.”

In the evening it rained, and when the rains stopped the winds began. The damp crawled into his bones, and Brienne’s armor clanked as she shiverered.

Jaime, whose fingers and toes and ears and eyelids and nose and chin and knees and elbows and arse were all quite numb, said “You’re goddamn noisy, wench. Build a fire if you’re so damn cold.”

She shook her head. “Too much wind.”

He shifted on the ground. “Will it cost me my balls if I say that we’d be warmer, closer together?”

“Your tongue,” she murmured. “I said I’d take your tongue.”

“Oh,” he said. “I’ll not suggest it, then.”

She did smile that time, he was almost sure of it.

He was lost inside a very willing and very warm Brienne and she was gasping with every stroke and gods he’d missed this, he missed _her_, bringing them both to orgasm was only an excuse to wrap around her body and press his mouth to her skin 

when her voice cut into his mind and jolted him awake.

She was dreaming.

He stayed still a moment and watched her.

It was a nightmare. She was whimpering, trembling. _No_, she said, and_ Please_.

He should wake her. It would be the chivalrous thing to do, the knightly thing to do. She’d always liked it when he was polite and well-behaved. But he didn’t move. 

The memories he liked most had nothing to do with being a _good boy_. He liked her hot, sweating and pleading, breathing hard into his ear while he was hard inside her, _Jaime please more_ —

She said his name again now. “Don’t.”

“Brienne. Wake up.”

She said something he couldn’t understand.

“Stop this fucking noise, you idiot wench, it’s only a nightmare, wake up wake _up_ —“

And she sat upright, gasping. Her face was a grey blur, her eyes streaks of white. “Jaime?”

He let his head fall back against the tree. “It was only a dream.”

She didn’t answer.

  
They didn’t speak that day, not really. Little things. _Take the left branch of the road,_ she said once, and they told a few easy lies to some passing smallfolk. 

He felt her watching him and could never catch her at it.

At dusk: “I missed you,” he said.

“I still have my knife,” she said.

“I do not mean it ... vulgarly,” he lied. “I missed seeing you. Speaking with you. Fighting. Bickering.”

“I did not _bicker_.”

“Wench, you are bickering now.”

Brienne fixed him with a hard look and did not reply.

She didn’t reply when he told her everything he remembered about the mornings they’d spent together sparring, or the afternoons working with the squires. Nights he snuck out to meet her, watching stars wheel above them._ Tell me a secret._

_You already know them all. _

“You were my best friend,” Jaime said to the fire.

“You left,” said Brienne. “That’s the end of it.”

It was not, of course, the end. In the evening he caught her unaware and stole a kiss instead of her sword, figuring this idea was better: she _might_ not kill him for this. 

He was punched for his trouble, with Brienne aiming a hard kick to his ribs when he fell. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

Jaime smiled. He was weak and underfed, his face was in the dirt and he likely had a broken rib — and none of that mattered, because his wench had kissed him back.

  
The next morning he said: “You kissed me.”

In response, Brienne held him facedown in a river far longer than was comfortable. He came up choking and puking, with her over his head like an avenging angel. “Do you regret that?” she asked him. “Are you going to do it again?”

“No,” he whispered.

“Speak up, Lannister.”

Instead, Jaime got to his feet. River water ran down his neck; river water ran through his clothes; it wet his breeches and seeped into his boots. He was tired, angry, hungry —

He said “I won’t kiss you again.”

“Good.”

“I won’t stop wanting it.”

“I don’t care what you —“

“I won’t stop thinking about you.”

“I’ve told you —“

“I won’t stop dreaming about you. People think you’re cold. Some virgin ice princess. Maiden and Warrior in one. But you aren’t cold, are you? You’ve never been. You kissed me in the stables all those years ago, you came to my rooms at night, you _wanted_ me —“

“I won’t listen to this.”

“You kissed me last night, wench. You want to do it again.”

She was shaking her head, rubbing her damp hands on her breeches. She looked down and said to her empty hands: “What difference does it make?” 

“— What?”

“Does it change anything?”

He stuttered. “We could — we could be _fucking_.”

“And then what? I take one very well-fucked Kingslayer to his family at Kings Landing? What good would that do anyone?“

“Perhaps a tumble would improve your mood, Lady Brienne.”

She looked so tired. “Stop japing and answer me truly. Would your cock help me return the Stark girls to Lady Catelyn? Would it bring back Renly —would it stop winter’s coming? And me. I have a duty to my father, a duty to Tarth. I must marry and produce heirs. Will laying with you find me a suitable husband?”

Once he’d asked to marry her. Laughing, dizzy with kisses, she’d accepted. 

Now he bit his mouth, feeling the sore place where she’d stuck him. He was lucky to have kept his teeth; Brienne had a strong arm. 

She said: “What will your sister say, if she sees you look at me like this?”  
  
“This isn’t about Cersei.”

“It is always about Cersei for you.”

He didn’t answer.

She said: “Come on. Let’s go on our way.”

“I’ll fight you for it,” said Jaime.

“— What? For a kiss?”

“Oh,” said Jaime, airily, “I think this wager is for a little more than a kiss, my lady.”

She eyed him. “You think to bed me.”

“I want to fuck you. I want to have you above me, riding me, taking your pleasure. I want my hands on your breasts and your legs around my hips, and when you lose control I want to feel your cunt tighten on me like it’s got me in a vise. I want to make you cry out in greed from my hand in your breeches. I want to eat at you and feel you drip on my tongue. I want to take you against a tree and in the leaves and ...”

His voice trailed off: Brienne was looking amused.

“Is that all?”

“Well,” said Jaime, “ideally we would do it more than once.”

“And if I win?”

“I will be so amazingly silent, you’ll forget you’ve captured a Lannister. You’ll think you’ve gone deaf. You’ll _beg_ me to talk.”

She stared at him so long he started to doubt himself again, but she only gave a  
curt nod and tossed a sword onto the ground. “We’ll begin at your word.”

He almost could not believe she’d agreed. Fighting her was nearly as good as fucking, and oh gods it had been _so long._ “If I win?”

She shrugged. “We’ll see.”

“You could untie me. Make it a proper fair fight.”

“I could.”

And they circled each other like hawks wheeling in the sky, neither one aware of the Mummers coming down the road to meet them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written over the span of a week because my head will simply not cooperate.  
this still isn’t nearly right, but i am trying to be mature and not obsess over (unattainable!!) perfection, so   
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

The night was clouded and the torches giving off more smoke than light. The man in the cage was half-covered in mud and his own filth.

She should have known him anyway. 

She _would_ have known him, she’d heard the rumors about some important prisoner, — she should have guessed it was him. 

Except that it couldn’t be Jaime. It wasn’t possible. 

Her heart stuttered. 

He looked past lady Catelyn and saw her — recognized her — and laughed aloud. “Gods, is that a _woman_?”

— and Brienne remembered with perfect clarity all the reasons she hated him.

  
“Walk.”

Jaime did not walk. “Are we going to pretend we don’t know one another?”

_Pretend_, he said. But she hadn’t ever known him. Not really. “Go.”

He went on, chattering about things neither one of them cared about, trying to wear down her defenses. Tire her out. She knew that trick; she did the same thing with the men she fought. Play defense awhile and then attack.

He didn’t like to be ignored, he never had been comfortable with that. One of his worst qualities, because it made him prickly and bold and stupid.

Jaime would attack eventually. She only had to wait.

She waited.

Around the fire that night, while she was skinning and gutting a rabbit, he finally said: “We should talk.”

“I’ve nothing to say to you.”

He tried to hide his anger. “You owe me a good bit more than common courtesy.”

“You killed Aerys,” she reminded him. “And your guard. And gods only know whom else. Why should I listen to you?”

He had plenty to say as to why she should listen, and Brienne let him talk. She checked the meat and dropped it to a bed of green leaves to let it cool awhile. She was quite hungry, and probably Jaime was as well; he sounded like a toddler who needed a nap. “This journey is for lady Stark. It’s not about who you are. You are nothing to me.”

He squawked.

“Enough, Kingslayer. _Enough_.”

“You were less formal before,” he said.

They’d been children before. 

Brienne poked at the meat and contemplated letting Jaime starve.

He said: “I heard about your engagement. Ser Humfrey complimented your skill with the mace.”

She snorted — and separated the rabbit two even portions. Jaime looked so thin.

He ate gracefully, with one hand a little loosened from the bonds.

Humfrey Wagstaff had told her that a woman was made for one thing only. He’d said his own sword would be enough for her, and he’d correct her if she thought otherwise.

Jaime was licking the juice from his fingers — a distracting sight. He finished his cat-bath and said, soft: “I would not have asked you to stop fighting.”

She knew that. She’d always known. “Time for sleep. 

“Brienne—“

“No.”

  
Even in the thin morning light, Jaime was beautiful. Time had brought out the fine bones of his face, sharpening the clear green of his eyes; and there was grim decision around his mouth now, she saw that too. 

What had happened to the laughing, careless boy?

He left it on Tarth, she thought: and corrected herself. No, he only left _me_ behind.

She had been in love with him, stupid and raw with it, had gone to bed with him thinking that the emotions were all on her own side. Thinking Jaime was her friend and nothing more.

And then she knocked on his door, explaining her idea of getting it over with. She was unable to meet his eyes, too afraid to see amusement or scorn or disgust there.

Far from arguing, he had pulled her into his bed. His body went over hers, inside hers. His head dropped to her shoulders; her hand tangled in his hair. Brienne.

He didn’t seem to know what to say afterwards and she certainly didn’t. They avoided each other the next day until deep into the night, when she wrapped herself in a woolen blanket and rapped on his door again and simply gave herself to him — Brienne to Jaime — her noise muffled by his mouth

He had laughed just to make her laugh, back then. 

And he’d kissed her, too. Hours and hours spent kissing her, every time he could find a spare moment, sheltered in the darkness of trees or a building.

And she had gone along, fool that she was, willing to believe he meant it when he said Marry me.

Brienne scowled and poked the fire.

No. She hadn’t been that much a fool. She didn’t lay with him for promises. She did it simply because she wanted him, she trusted him, she wanted ...

She wanted him still.

Jaime leaned his head against the tree and watched her, considering.

He caught her off her guard and kissed her, pressing himself against her body with easy sureity, like he knew he belonged there.

And Brienne kissed him back. She didn’t know why. He was wicked and loud and annoying and a murderer king-killing sister fucking traitor and she kissed him without any hesitation at all, her mouth opening against his, he was all those things and it didn’t matter at all because he was Jaime. She wanted him. She’d always wanted him. And she felt him wanting her. 

She found herself reaching to bring him closer and turned it into a sloppy punch, kicking him in the ribs for good measure. Fuck you. “Don’t you dare.”

He lay in the dirt and smiled, the bastard, and she —

Nevermind.

He suggested that they fuck, because of course he did. 

It was all she could do to keep from asking if he wanted her in the sunlight or the shadow.

“No,” she told him, and pulled him down by his hair. “Shut your mouth.”

He liked the violence. His eyes darkened; his cheeks flushed. He licked his lips. “I’d make it worthwhile.”

She couldn’t look away from his mouth. “And then what? I return you to your family and your sister, fucked-out and barely able to walk? What good would that do anyone?”

“You miss it,” he said. His lashes dropped down; his voice shifted too, becoming low and graveled. “You want my hands on your body. And my mouth.”

Brienne felt her heart beat between her legs. Gods help her. “And, so?”

“Isn’t pleasure enough of a reason?”

No. Yes.

There were people who chased after a certain brown powder, boiled down from the poppy flower. There were people who drank too much wine, or fell into bed with strangers, or spent days on their knees praying to the Stranger. They gave up everything to find their fixation: family, money, pride all gone. Nothing mattered as long as they could have one more time.

She’d never understood things like that before Jaime. Why not? he said to her: and she couldn’t see anything except his mouth, his long jawline, the shadows beneath his eyes. The press of his cock against his trousers.

Why not. 

“If you can beat me,” she said. “If you can beat me — We’ll see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all mistakes, poor decisions, grammatical errors, and bizarre comma usage i blame squarely on the new ao3 text editor that returns me to the start every time i make a single change and often refuses to scroll until i save & refresh the page
> 
> dear ao3: the FUCK

**Author's Note:**

> the best part in ASOIAF is when Brienne kicks Jaime in the ribs. i think about that moment a lot, honestly.
> 
> *
> 
> i have a desperate need for jaime lannister to wake up and smell the sapphires


End file.
